Katowice: a time re-think how music can keep contributing to social cohesion

Like many other cities in the whole world, Katowice is currently struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. And this has somehow affected the progress of the URBACT OnStage project in our town.

However, we do not want to focus on the negative issues in this article: we want to share with you only positive news and visions for the future because, at this stage, our plans are becoming more mature and realistic. In that regard, we finally got time to slow down and re-think and analyze our concepts, prepare a plan B, C and D. Maybe even to change our Transfer Plans once again…

Since our project is dedicated to public primary schools and communities around them, we are now waiting for the moment when kids will return back to the normal school schedule. We are proud of our URBACT Local Group because its members are very open, ready to work and creative. We are sure that when the world will return to the right track again, they will have a chance to use their positive energy to change their reality.

Good news, new plans in town

On March 2020, we received great news about the bailout dedicated to our Katowice City of Gardens Culture Institution from the Ministry of Culture and Culture Heritage (through an open contest) to realize a project called ‘Katowice Orchestral Folk University’.

Thanks to this support, we will be able to realize 160 hours of music tutorial workshops for brass instruments for kids, youth and adults in our city during the period September-December 2020. That is going to be a huge enterprise with a great local finale during the second edition of Move Your Brass Festival (December 4-6, 2020), and this can be considered a perfect test – under a merit, organizational, logistic perspective - before we will start our regular music classes in our local schools on 2021. 

Together with our URBACT Local Group, we are currently preparing the update of our plans and activities for 2020 and 2021– because as it turns out, we will luckily have 6 more months to learn, exchange and share with our URBACT OnStage partners.

___

Article by Marlena Hermanowicz - For further information, please contact her at marlenahermanowicz@vp.pl

Pictures by Arkadiusz Ławrywianiec ©

Follow our activity on Twitter and visit our website www.urbact.eu/onstage